Castlebar Tennis Club joins the ‘think green’ generation!

31 Oct Castlebar Tennis Club joins the ‘think green’ generation!

On the 25th October, Castlebar Tennis Club, with the sponsorship of McGraths Waste Management has become the first tennis club in the Connacht to launch their ‘think green’ initiative. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate all single use plastics from the tennis club and in support of this initiative, we have introduced a Castlebar Tennis Club branded “reusable water bottle” which is BPA free.

In recent times, more and more media attention has been given to highlighting the detrimental effect that plastic is having on our environment. Each of us are beholden to protect our environment for our children and our children’s children. Here in Castlebar Tennis Club, we are leading the way in doing just that and hope that other sports clubs will soon follow our lead!

The statistics are frightening! Did you know that according to Eurostat figures, Ireland was the EU’s top producer of plastic waste producing 61kg per person in 2015 and that 500,000 tonnes of EU plastic waste ends up in the sea every year!

Plastics are not bio-degradable and over time, they shrink, creating what we call micro-plastics; these micro-plastics are being ingested by marine and terrestrial animals with devastating outcomes. In fact, experts at NUIG (National University of Ireland, Galway) recently published research highlighting that 70% of deep-sea fish from our seas had ingested plastic not to mention how many birds and sea-life have died from being trapped or caught in plastic waste.

Around our tennis club (and in every other sports club) the excessive usage of single-use plastics has become more and more evident. On a daily basis, numerous plastic bottles are left on court which have to be dumped into waste. Now that we are aware of these issues; Castlebar Tennis Club has pioneered a new initiative to promote the 3 Rs campaign: “Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle” – we are the first tennis club in Connacht to introduce this 3 Rs green initiative.

Our ultimate goal is to completely eliminate all single-use plastics from our club not only through introducing our branded reusable water bottle but also by replacing plastic straws with paper ones; using recyclable disposable coffee cups and encouraging members to become more green aware, and consciously not bring single-use plastics into the club.

On the 25th October we held the official launch of our 3 Rs campaign promoting our branded reusable water bottle. With the help of McGrath Waste Management and our Club Members we hope that Castlebar Tennis Club will continue to protect our environment for generations to come!